Tag Archives: Google StreetView

I’ve begun loading a selection of photos to HistoryPin, which is a “way for people to come together to share and celebrate local history. It consists of a shared archive, a mutually supportive community and a collaborative approach to engagement with local history.” HistoryPin allows us to share our collections in a new way by making it easier to see images in geographic and historical context by way of timelines and Google StreetView mashups.

I uploaded a group of San Francisco photos to start, including a group of gorgeous Lothars & Young prints of the SF waterfront and Sea Cliff neighborhood in the 1920s, as well as some featuring Sonoma County residents, including the late Petaluma Library librarian Maxine Kortum, shown above outside the SF Main Library about 1948. Photos can be “pinned” to a collection (including collections other members create) and arranged for tours. We will pin more photos to the SF collection as well as to other collections as time allows. In the meantime, HP members from around the world have uploaded tons and tons of great images and more that tell stories of their communities — have fun exploring!

Looking north on North Main Street at Bodega Avenue in Sebastopol, circa 1960s

I’m pleased to announce completion of the WSCHS Collection in the Heritage Collections. The collection created by volunteers at the West County Museum in Sebastopol, Calif. currently contains nearly 7000 historical images from Sebastopol and western Sonoma County. Luther Burbank and his Gold Ridge Experiment Farm, the Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad, and the local apple industry get a lot of space in the collection, but it also includes hundreds of portraits, extensive architectural images (including those from Evelyn McClure’s Sebastopol, California : History, Homes and People, 1855-1920) and snapshots of daily life in the area. As with our other collections, many images (except for portraits) are paired with a Google StreetView image for a “then & now” experience; multiple photographs of some houses and other building can provide a different view of changes over time.

Bringing this collection into the Heritage Collections demonstrates the synergy of shared resources. For the library, the new virtual collection broadens the existing collections by filling in many gaps in our holdings; for the WSCHS, the existing Heritage Collections give additional context to their collection, and even more importantly, makes it visible to their members, the community and the world. As I noted in my earlier post, the WSCHS catalogs their materials with the museum software platform PastPerfect, but does not have the web component, so this is the first time the full scope of the West County Museum’s images can be explored outside the museum’s walls.

We will incorporate new images into the WSCHS collection annually as Historical Society volunteers continue to scan existing and new donations.